Certifiable

The sparkling freshness of the poems in _Certifiable_ belies the seasoned career of Pamela Mordecai, author of several poetry collections, plays, cultural histories, and essays. This recent volume, like those which preceded it, prove that this crafty wordsmith refuses to settle for variations of the same theme or a proven formula. Rather, she approaches her art with the same spunkiness and flair evinced by many of the female personae in the poems: one female speaker, after enumerating the many qualities that recommend her as "well fixed / for all love's traffic" patly challenges, "So tell me, brother, / What have you to give?" A poet well known in Caribbean circles, she is unjustly overlooked by most of the critical audience in the Caribbean, the U.S., and Canada where she has lived for several years. West Indian and Canadian, her work straddles the two worlds with aplomb. While a poem like "Jus a Likl Lovin" addresses the hardships facing adolescent convent girls in Jamaica, "Blessed Assurance" portrays an old subway evangelist determined to help "one prodigal / find him way back to him Pa" in spite of the pain she experiences in daily negotiating Toronto subways. Mordecai will appeal to both connoisseurs of poetic form and fans of performance, vernacular poetry. She combines the same grace with form and voice reflected in poets like Elizabeth Bishop, Michael Ondaatje, and Lorna Goodison. While her imagery can be startlingly precise, it never feels contrived or manipulated: an abandoned pregnant young woman is "aglow with a rain / of black hair that just / stirs in the burp / of the subway's hot air." The vernacular flow of those lines are equalled or surpassed by the infectious rhythms of lines like these: a creole boy child on Shakespeare's _Tempest_ isle "him tongue twining with curses / Muttering glossalalic nonsenses / him find him can decline him pain in verses, start spirits with words...." As well, a wry humour sharpens the ironic edge of several poems: to the radiologist's caveat that breast exams be paid in cash for "too much handwritten money is funny these days," she quips, "Well, it's nice that my doc / has his procedures straight." At ease in the cultural and literary traditions of North America as well as Caribbean, Mordecai will please readers of contemporary American poetry, Caribbean poetry, performance and slam poetry buffs, cultural studies scholars, and anyone who enjoys a good way with words.